For the last 2.5 month, Joe and I have been sleeping in a green room with red blinds. This was not our design choice, but rather something we came into.
It has been interesting, to say the least.
To give the blinds credit, they are very good at blocking out the light (which I have taken advantage of when sleeping in on the weekends), but they are horrible in every other way. When the sun shines through the blinds, there is a red glow throughout the room. It honestly feels like I’m in a horror movie. The room has also felt very dark and dirty because of these blinds.
The blinds aren’t even a deep red. They’re blood-red.
That’s not even the worst part… they were custom ordered.
Now, I’m not against getting blinds that are in fun colors, but this is an aggressive color. I’m not sure if the bedroom walls were always green or our landlords repainted them before we moved in. I like to imagine that the walls were black or red with these curtains because that’s the only way it can make sense to me. Even with those colors, I’m pushing it.
Life has been hectic lately so it took me a while before I could high-tail my butt over to Home Depot and pick up some replacements. I originally grabbed some white aluminum blinds but a sweet older lady recommended that I get the plastic version (I grabbed these 30″ blinds for $4.70 each). The plastic blinds were the cheaper option – by over $17.00 each! – and they wouldn’t show any dents. If that’s not a win-win, I’m not sure what is.
I’ve never changed blinds before so I was very intimated by this project. In my mind, I thought I could pass this project off to Joe but it didn’t happen that weekend because Joe’s at the end of his semester and has a full plate on his hands. Ultimately, I put on my big girl pants and tackled this project. There’s only so many times you can wake up in a red haze before you have to do something about it.
Side note: all of these photos are going to be from below because I am incredibly short, even with a step stool.
I followed the instructions that came with the new blinds. The first thing I did was pull the blinds all the way up. This makes it very easy when you’re ready to remove them.
Where the blinds are clipped into the wall, there are these little covers that you can slide right out. Once you’ve done that, you can just pull out the blinds. Be warned that there will probably be a lot of dust when this happens.
I tossed these suckers immediately into a trash bag.
While the bracket on the left was okay, the bracket on the right wasn’t installed all the way to the edge of the trim so it had gotten a little warped and stretched over time. This was a simple fix: I unscrewed the bracket and grabbed one of the new brackets and installed that closer to the edge.
Once the brackets where in the right place, I just grabbed the new blinds, slide them into the bracket, and cover the brackets with those little pieces that slide in. I also added the valance piece at this point.
Can we just take a minute and talk about how much better the room looks now without those crazy red blinds? The room feels about 1000% cleaner and it’s much more relaxing at this point. I’m actually a fan of the green on the walls (the red blinds altered the green constantly, and not in a good way).
And, rather than having you scroll back up top to check out what we originally had, here’s a side-by-side comparison. I’m not sure how it comes across on everyone else’s monitors, but you can see that the walls on the left are sort of a muddy-green color, where as the photo on the right is a more accurate version of the green on the walls.
Yesterday morning was the first morning waking up with the new blinds. While they definitely don’t block anywhere near as much light as those red blinds, they get the job done. Besides, I’m looking to invest in some curtains for this room to help tie everything together. I spent a decent amount of my Sunday just walking into the bedroom and admiring how bright and clean it looked.
Did you spend the weekend tackling any projects that had been on your to-do list for far too long? Anyone else been intimidated by swapping or installing blinds? What’s the worst color you’ve seen (growing up, our basement had teal blinds)?
[the latest bunch of flowers I picked up from the grocery store]
